Spring over here is disastrous. It is cold and wet. Therefore I had not a lot of opportunities to harvest dandelions, and is the elder not yet blooming. That is very sad. I am planning to go on a holliday witin a month, and I had planned to make 90 liter elderflower wine before that. Indeed 90 liter as last year's 60 liter have been gone long ago, so good was it. Look in last years May entries for an easy elderflower harvesting method and my elderflower recipe. Now if I can not harvest any elderflowers or can not harvest them in time, I do not have enough time left to make the wine.Freezing the elderflowers is an option. I did that last year, and just a few weeks ago I made a wine with the frozen elderflower petals of last year. I hope to be able to tell you if the wine was successfull before the end of the month.In the mean time I have a recipe below that is meant for the brave amongst you.

Sometimes you want to try something special. And I found just that on the net. A recipe for making wine with chocolate. Not directly something I could imagine a flavor with, however I decided to jump the bandwagon.

Now chunks of chocolate are not soluble in water, so the recipe prescribed cacao powder.Cacao powder is used a lot over here to make chocolate-milk. That is however milk-based and milk is part fat. Pure cacao dissolved in water does not give a pleasant result. The pairing of milk and cacao gives the best flavor.Nevertheless there are circulating some very enthousiastic stories on the web about this wine.So I decided to make 10 liter as an experiment.

Beware that this will be an expensive wine compared to all my previous recipes. The ingredients used (honey, cherries, citrus juice and cacao) are relatively expensive.

Day 1

I started as usual by making a yeast starter, using my proven method. You can re-read my story on making a yeast starter byclicking here.

Day 2

The next day the starter was fermenting vigorously, so time to make the wine.

I started by pouring 8 jars with each containing 450 gram of honey in a large pan. I added 2,5 liter water and while stirring brought it to a boil. Stirring is important. When you do not stir the honey might stick to the bottom of the pan and caramellise.

When the honey-water mixture boiled I took it off the stove and let it slowly cool down. While cooling down I added 15 gram nutrient.

A wine also needs some acidity. I decided to add lemon juice for acidity. Two bottles of 200 ml each were poured into the cooling must. These 400 ml lemon juice would, according to my calculations, bring acidity to a level of .4The lemon juice together with the acidity of the, yet to be mixed in, cherries would bring the total acidity to an acceptable level.

Please be aware that in the Netherlands bottles of lemonjuice conatin sulphites as a preservation means. This may also be the case in your country. Now the amount of sulphite will not influence or wine as it will be minimal in relation to the 10 liter wine we are making. However when you are allergic for sulphites you should use fresh lemon juice or citric acid.

Like I said it is of course possible to use citric acid, or the juice of fresh lemons in stead of lemon juice out of bottles. If you want to know how much citric acid you should use, or in general want to know how to exchange citric acid for lemon juice you should read my story about this by clicking here.

Next I opened the cans of cherries and added the juice to the still cooling must. The cherries themselves were put apart.

Next I poured 375 gram cacao in a large bowl and added 500 ml water. I put the mixer in the bowl and ..................

Well an hour later I had cleaned the kitchen and learned a valuable lesson: never mix cacao and water in an open bowl..........

So I started this part over. I put the 375 gram cacao in a high measuring beaker and added 500 ml water. Then I mixed it until it became some sort of chocolate porridge.

Next it was the cherries turn. I put them in a large bowl and mashed them with a potatoe masher. The cherry pulp was put into a nylon stocking which was closed with a knot.Then all prepared ingredients were poured in a large primary.

After tyhe must had cooled down to room temperature I added a teaspoon of pectic enzyme.

Day 3

In the morning I added the yeast starter to the must in the primary.

In the evening when I got home from work the must was fermenting. From that moment on the must was stirred at least twice a day.

14 Days later.

Pulp fermenting had now been going on for 2 weeks and I decided it was time to transfer the must to a secondary.

I took the nylon stocking (with the remains of the cherries) out of the must and slichtly pressed it by hand. I did this above the primary so all juice flowed right back in.

Next the juice was sieved using my bucketsieve and transferred to a carboy with an airlock.

Each winemaker needs a good sieve at some point in winemaking. A normal kitchen sieve does the job, however it is often too small to sieve large volumes. So for large volume's I always use my home build bucket sieve. Really simple to build (even I could do it) and very efficient. If you want to know how to build a bucket sieve yourself click here.

The carboy was filled with water to the brim and therefore contained 10 liter water.

As the must had been pulp-fermenting for 2 weeks fermentation was slow.3 Months later

The wine had finished fermenting and had cleared. There was a thick layer of sediment, and I thought it was time to transfer it to an empty carboy. After racking I had to add half a liter water to replace the lees that were left behind. It is off course possible to fill up with a neutral wine, however the expected high alcohol level and full flavor i decided to fill up with water.

6 Months later

Time to bottle. During bottling I could not resist to take a sip. The wine was definitely chocolatty, next the cherry flavor came along. This wine really needs to age.

1 Year later

While writing this story I am wondering wether or not to publish it. I just don't like the wine.At opening the bottle you will immediately smell chocolate. No cherries to be found anymore. The wine has a strange aftertaste. Totally undefined however outspoken.Then again it is all a matter of taste. The internet lists several winemakers that are very enthousiastic about this wine.And remember the 30 liter pumpkin wine I simply poured down the drain. There are many that find pumkin wine deliscious.And there are many that do not like dandelion wine at all, and I really love it.So make your own choice.

Another possibillity is that this wine needs to age more, just like my apricot wine that needed 3 year aging.

So I will not pour this chocolate-cherry-honey wine down the drain, and give it a few more years.